


Starlights

by CompletelyCreative



Category: Supernatural
Genre: All pairings aside from Castiel/Dean are mentioned, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 09:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3845416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CompletelyCreative/pseuds/CompletelyCreative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester is an Uptown New Yorker who's bored with his too-safe life. He wants to put his suspenders away, dust off his boots, and become a Self-run Circus, like the good old days. He just needs someone to do it with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Starlights

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little cute quickie that I thought up!  
> Unbeta-ed, for I wanted it to be a cute surprise for my friends as well, so I'm so sorry if there are any mistakes!

‘What do you want your life to be, Dean?’

Dean squinted at Sam from behind the lip of his coffee mug.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ He knew what it meant.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘No I don’t.’ Yes he did.

Dean Winchester used to be a traveling circus, a road-show of his own kind. With 26 bucks to his name and 26 years to his wisdom, he decided to take a trip around the country, just for the ‘young, dirty hell of it.’ It lasted nearly seven years -- meeting people, fucking people, sometimes even saving people. It was fun while it lasted -- he gained crow’s feet faster than his own father had, he made best friends and 26 years of wisdom multiplied by the tens and thousands. He was   
wild, and he liked it.

Now, life in the big city was, more or less, the most catastrophically boring thing Dean Winchester ever had the time for. He wore suspenders under a Zegna Jacket fitted from Brook’s Brothers, ate three solid meals a day, and lived in a Classic Flat in Uptown Manhattan. He had a stable job as a surgeon, of all professions, and was safely locked away on the seventh floor of the hospital for seven hours a day.

And Dean Winchester, the run-down circus with 50,000 dollars to his name, was dead tired of it all. He didn’t move, he didn’t yell or scream at others for any reasons at all anymore, compared to many. His beloved black four-door was locked away in a garage. It was gathering dust.

At the cafe that only Wall Street could afford, Dean sat with his always-little brother Sam, a genius who’s wife, of course, worked on Wall Street. She, Jessica, was about to have a baby. They wanted to name it Wilson. Sam rolled his shoulders back.

‘Come on, you have a leading job that Jess could -- hell, she would -- write about, you live on   
the Upper East Side, but you haven’t even had a solid date in what, two years? You’re actually safe and stable, and you’re the dullest I’ve ever seen you. And I have seen you,’ Dean ran his tongue over his teeth, ‘so let’s play pretend, shall we? Humor me, Dean. I’ve got--’ Sam looked out the window they were sat next to, not to check the time but traffic, ‘23 minutes... Maybe less. So...

‘What do you want, Dean?’

Sam always knew when the balance in something was off. And God, did he hate it. Dean could understand. The balance was off in their family, that’s why their parents split. The balance was off in their mother’s brain. That’s why she died. The balance was off in their father’s flask. That’s why he crashed. Sam hated dis-balance, and Dean’s life was too balanced to be comfortable. And not to mention, Sam was right again. At 37, Dean hadn’t seen the body of a woman since the New Year’s before his 35th. He couldn’t figure out if it was preference... or lack of it, anymore.

So okay. He’ll play pretend.

‘What I want in my life, is to... drive again. Drive my baby to Cali by not to L.A., nah... just the edge of the desert. I’d go up to Seattle then, and then visit Florida -- no, Michigan. But only for a little while, their opinions are fucked up. I’d visit Rhode Island, go the East Coast, y’know, coastal coast... and I’d see Boston too. I wanna try those cream pies. I’d go through the Carolinas then, look at the beaches... and I wouldn’t go to Florida at all, actually. I’d go to Kansas. Right smack in the middle.’ Dean’s throat was dry again and there were old tanned crow’s feet at his eyes... again. He knew it wasn’t very ‘New Yorker’ at all, but more like the exact opposite. But he was tired of being a New Yorker, anyway. Sam looked at him.

‘And you... want to do this by yourself? Alone?’ Dean felt himself shake his head urgently.

‘Hell no.’

‘Well... Who would you go with, then? ‘Cause I couldn’t go, not like I did for that gap year in college.’ Dean felt himself shrug.

‘I dunno, Sammy, I mean...’

‘You still like women, right?’ If Dean were confidently honest, he’d answer directly. But he just felt himself repeating the word ‘preference,’ and then saying it.

‘There’s just... There are a lot of preferences I have, Sammy. You know? I mean,’ his throat was still dry, ‘you have that, right?’ Sam twisted his wedding band. Dean knew it had ‘Wilson & Son’ Embroidered on the inside. He carried those rings at the wedding, after all.

‘No.’

Right. Dean supposed it was time to play pretend again.

‘Um, well... I’ll tell you, then.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Ssssssshe... would be tall.’ Sam joined the game.

‘Cassie was tall.’

‘She was a road-trip fling.’ He remembered Cassie, even right there and then at the cafe.

‘You loved her.’

She was a road-trip fling.

Dean didn’t answer Sam. He cleared his throat, moved on.

‘Anyway, She... you know, this person I’d be with.. would be energetic. Sparky.’

‘Wasn’t Jo... Sparky?’ Dean waved his hand, dismissing Sam’s suggestion. He knocked the sugar over.

‘Yeah, but she was too short.’

‘You didn’t seem to mind, the way you gave her that final kiss before --’

‘She was too short, Sammy.’

Right.

Dean fiddled with the handle of his cup as his mind reached the one sense that was strongest, for whatever reason. The last thing, it seemed unimportant. But it was strong.

‘My girl... My girl, in a perfect world, would smell like peppermint.’

‘Peppermint?’

‘Mhm.’ His response was enthusiastic, but true. Dean once, years ago at a crashed party or failed meet-up, watched someone with lightning bolts in their eyes kiss a Starlight peppermint, and bring it to his own lips. It might have been on a dare, of a game of suck-and-blow, he couldn’t remember. But he always kept Starlights in his glove-box after that. They were in the parking garage now. Sam was silent for a bit. He was thinking.

‘What’d Lisa smell like, then?’

Oh Lisa. The last outline of a woman Dean saw on the New Year’s Ever before his 35th. She had a son, Ben, who wanted to either be a rockstar or baseball player when he grew up. Dean couldn’t help him with that.

‘Eh, she smelled like Grapefruits.’

‘You loved Grapefruits.’ Dean cleared his throat.

‘They make me sneeze.’

‘...What about Jo, then? I mean, she smelled fresh.’ 29 years old.

‘No, that was rubbing alcohol.’

‘And Cassie...’ 24 years old.

Dean opened his eyes. 37 years old, and he was playing pretend. He looked down at his place at the two-person table, tilting down over slow, 23-minute traffic. His coffee cup was empty.

‘Cassie smelled like Vanilla.’

|-|-|-|-|

The train ran smooth, and Dean stood up to let an old Asian woman take his seat. It was a busy route, but Dean didn’t mind. He liked taking the train; it moved faster.

The old woman was the first to get in the car at that stop, wherever it was, and five more people followed to get on. There were two suitcase-carriers, one woman with a black leather purse, a fellow with spiked hair and a loose-hanging backpack, and a teen in a hoodie and ear-buds. They all sat down or stayed by the door. Two people left the train. The doors closed. The spike-haired man came to stand to the immediate right of Dean. The train started to move.

Dean looked at the man, his eyes looking just a bit down but not too much, like when he was 24 years old. The man was planted literally right next to Dean, facing him, so close that if he tilted his head up just the slightest bit, they would touch. Dean examined the bags under the man’s hidden eyes and reminded himself that he was not a pediatricion and couldn’t declare anything about sleeping habits. The man lifted his lids but didn’t tilt his head, and when Dean saw energy in bolts of blue, he asked himself why he was even a doctor.

‘Hey,’ the man spoke simply. Dean couldn’t do the same, he just nodded. The guy smirked. ‘I know, I’m a sight to look at, aren’t I?’

He was a sight, and Dean... well, Dean found himself wanting to see more.

‘You’re... you’re intriguing, definitely.’ His voice was smooth, he sounded from the Upper East once again. His throat was still dry. ‘Uh... where you heading?’ The man shrugged.

‘Wherever the next stop brings me, I guess.’ The next stop, the one before his own, was in seven minutes. It didn’t really lead anywhere. Not anywhere residential, anyway. Dean frowned.

‘...And then?’ He shrugged again, but this time held a smile on his face.

‘Out of town.’

Dean wanted to look over the man’s shoulder to his light-weight bag and ask what he had in there to last ‘out of town.’ He wanted to ask him how he slept. He wanted to tilt his head any which way, maybe even down... but he held out his hand instead.

‘Dean Winchester.’ The man didn’t take his hand to shake, but smiled.

‘Castiel.’ He winked, ‘but call me Cas.’ Dean swallowed.

‘Well, you definitely seem... out there-- I mean,’ nice one, Winchester, ‘in a good way.’ To his luck, Cas just laughed at that.

‘I get that more than you’d think. I guess I’m like some sort of self-made Freakshow. It’s okay, though. You know,’ he winked again, God he needed to stop winking or... ‘In a good way.’

Dean was... excited. There were two more scheduled minutes until Castiel left the car, and Dean was excited. Not because Cas hed to leave, but because of... just, Cas. Two years of dull, shadowed boredom and...

The train stopped. Dean shot up to look outside. They were a minute and seventeen seconds early. No, his excitement couldn’t be this short-lived, there had to be something he could do...

This was something important, Dean knew it. He couldn’t let it just hop off a train that wasn’t moving fast enough. It was just too exciting, too interesting... It was just what he was looking for. Sam told him that he needed someone to travel with if he wanted to do it for a lifetime. These seven minutes, well, five minutes and forty-three seconds... they were not enough for a lifetime, but the excitement that filled that time... that was. Dean’s face grew red. The doors opened. He closed his eyes. He tilted his head down.

He missed.

He opened his eyes.

Castiel was on the platform, right outside the window that was to Dean’s immediate right. He was reaching into his bag, the front pocket. Dean gripped the ceiling bar of the train. Two people entered the car. Five people left. Castiel drew a single Starlight peppermint from his bag and stuck his tongue out, placing the candy in his open mouth. His lips closed as the door closed, and Dean could have sworn that he saw the blue-bolt eyes wink at him through the window as the train started to move.

Dean went home, but not for long. He ran around his flat, throwing old shirts and jeans into a stained duffel, ignoring his suit and suspenders that lay on his his bed, meant for the next day. He almost ran out of his house without looking back, but paused at the last second. In the ornate desk drawer he pulled two things out before shutting the door behind him. He gripped a rusted key-chain for a beloved black four-door car, and a 20 dollar bill — just enough for a packet of Starlights.


End file.
